Today I’d like to cover the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to their real estate investments. This is from over two hundred calls we have had with African diaspora in the past three, four months. It is straight from the horse’s mouth!

When it comes to real estate, we are doing so many things wrong! Then we begin to wonder, why aren’t we getting results? Why aren’t we making the progress that we thought we should be making by now? The reason we discovered, is there are a number of things that are preventing most people. And I’m here to tackle them today because I’m all about keeping it real.

This is from the experience we’ve had with our own investments and with those of the people that we’re working with every single day. It’s the top three mistakes that we have discovered over the past three, four months. The idea is that you can use these discoveries to evaluate where you are with regards to your own real estate investments. Are you actually on track? Are you using the right bank or are you still kind of wandering about? You never know, you might be doing the completely wrong thing and have no idea! Because often, when we get started with our real estate investments we tend to jump right in without the expertise or skills.

Think about it. For your career, you spend ages preparing for it.

You prepared for your career or anything that you do or did post high school, isn’t it? Doing that diploma or graduate degree or postgraduate degree, there’s so much we do in preparation for a career. We spent almost four to six years preparing for the career that we set out to engage in.

But when it comes to real estate, we’re not putting as much time or effort into it. You’re not investing your time, or investing your money. I’m going to ask you right now, think about how much you have spent in your education. Think about it right now. How much have you spent preparing you for your career? I would hazard a guess that is nothing less than $100,000. Or maybe you joined a public school like I did for my undergraduate, the best in the country, and didn’t have that much school fees to pay beyond room and board. So, for some countries, this may be closer to $10,000, if you count your room and board, your school fees and so on. You spent a lot of time. And you know what, most people are going to earn a lot more from their real estate investments than they ever will earn from their career.

This is the truth of the matter – we will earn much more from our real estate investments than we ever will earn from our careers. Just because of the nature of real estate investments.

So why aren’t we spending enough time in it?

I am already touching on one of the things that we normally encounter. So, let’s just start with #1.

Mistake #1 Adopting The Wait-And-See Approach

This is by far the worst mistake that people are making, adopting the wait-and-see approach. You’re like, “Okay I see that there are things people are purchasing right now, I might maybe get into a few low-cost investments. Maybe I’ll wait-and-see”.

Now, you’re either ‘waiting-to-see’ to see when you’re inside the investment, or you’re ‘waiting-to-see’ when you’re outside the investment. Both of these are not the way to do it.

So, you can do this in one of two ways. You are looking around at potential real estate investments and you are think “Okay, this seems a little bit out of reach for me right now, I’m going to wait-and-see.”

Or maybe you’re like “Okay, that one seems too …. (insert whatever adjective you want to us) … I’m going to wait-and-see.”

So, you just sit aside and you wait-and-see.

Wait-and-see approach is not going to help you one little bit because guess what’s going to happen with real estate. It will always accrue in value. If you want to get into it, you want to get into it now.

So, that’s one end of the wait-and-see approach.

The other end of the wait-and-see approach is saying, “I am going to get into this real estate investment, and then I am going to wait-and-see.”

So “I’m going to buy land, I’m going to buy or a stand, I’m going to a plot”, whatever you call it in whichever country. “And then, I’m going to wait-and-see if that land accrues in value, or I’m going to wait-and-see if something comes up around this property that’s going to make it easier to get something out of”, you think. But either way both of these are a wait-and-see approach that are not helping you at all.

Because #1, you just let a perfectly good investment pass you by.

Or #2, you’ve got into an investment and it’s eating up your money and not giving you back anything in return.

So why would we ever do that? Do you buy a car and then go and pack it in your garage and say, this is cool? I got that car, men, I got it’. And then you are sitting there, enjoying having the car.

This is the same with our real estate investments. We don’t just buy them, and then we are waiting to see. We move into monetizing. What we have found, the people that are getting the best results for their real estate investments, they are adopting a pro-active approach. they are moving forward and saying “I see this investment, I am going to get into it, I ‘m going to take it all the way, until it starts to bring me money.”

And the way it brings you back money, would be depend. Is it going to bring you back money through rental income? Is it going to bring you back money through agricultural income? Like through using greenhouses and the like. Is it going to bring you money through leasing it to people who want to use it for various purposes? Whichever way it is, you are moving forward. Wait and see is pretty much the worst approach that can ever use.

So, that’s the #1 approach that is one of the worst you could ever use. Don’t do. And what’s a better approach? Keep reading. And if this resonates with you that “yes, I’ve fallen into this trap”, never fear, we do it so often, it’s so natural because we don’t want to move, we don’t want to take action. We want to kind of sit and wait for things to come to us. And that approach just doesn’t work.

#2 Playing It By Ear

I’m going to go into the next mistake that people make when it comes to the real estate investment and I’m just going to call this one, you know, playing it by ear or guesswork, so to speak.

Playing it by ear is when you’re getting into something, but you have no idea if it will give you returns, because you’ve not run the numbers. Because you’ve not sought to find out, “if I put this money into my real estate investment, I’ll get this amount back”.

Playing by the ear is not what the top real estate investors do. I’m going to lay it out for you. Guesswork will never get you where you want to go. Do you start a business without a business plan? Even if you don’t have a business plan, don’t you start the business with an idea of what it is you want to get out of that business? Don’t you have an idea of this is the product that I am going to sell, this is where I am going to sell it, this is who needs this product.

You don’t start a business without having all these tenets in place.

So why do the same for real estate? Why get in when you have no idea how you’re going to monetize it, when you have no idea if it’s even going to bring your returns. One thing I have found is,

before you get into a real estate investment it’s very important that you figure out what that investment is going to give you back. It’s basically doing analysis. Doing an analysis to know what is the market rate, what are you going to pay it for, what will be your daily rental rate? What occupancy that you can expect? How often it will be rented out, therefore, you know how often you can put as an average income per month. And, of course, you know conversely, what will be your average expense per month? What are the different things that you’re going to offer?

So, you can’t just jump right into this without analyzing it, simply because it’s not a wise move. Sure, you can play by ear, but you’re simply not going to get the best results.

You know why? Because the time that you determine whether you’re going to be making any real estate returns is before you invest in the property, not after.

Watch the rest of this article below..

Want to know more about how short term rentals can super-speed your real estate investment process? Here’s a great place to start -> http://jacquelinetsuma.com/5steps

Jacqueline Tsuma is Founder and Director of Upani Homes and JT Consulting, lifestyle companies that provide coaching, consulting and done-for-you services in the area of real estate and home ownership for both diaspora and local home buyers, as well work with brick and mortar businesses based in Africa for their digital marketing. She is also a motivationa speaker and is Co-Host of the AfricaX Show.

She works with African professionals in the Diaspora to help them maximize their real estate investments, by providing the best strategies for getting financing, managing and monetizing their properties back home. Watch her free masterclass to learn the the 5 Steps Our Clients Use to Earn Six-Figure Rents From Their Homes in Africa (while living abroad and doing it 100% virtually.) More here -> http://jacquelinetsuma.com/5steps .

Connect with Jacqueline here on LinkedIn or visit her at jacquelinetsuma.com

One of the things I enjoy about being an expat is that I have learned to travel light.

Give me 30 minutes to pack my bag for a week vacation and I will do it with precision, perfection, and efficiency.

But sometimes I revert to my old “I-must-carry-everything-I-own ways”. You know the ones, when you have packed two full suitcases for your beachside vacation and end up never even opening one of the suitcases. Or you have carried everything and the kitchen sink in your airplane carry-on then can’t get it to fit in those little overhead luggage compartment, to your chagrin and that of everyone trying to get past you as they board. 😳😳

One recent relapse of mine comes to mind. For my birthday, my husband treated me to a surprise day at the Skin spa for a full body treatments and a number of beauty treatments. That was simply divine. (Hint to husbands: Anything that can get your wife some along pampering time, DO IT).

He told me to carry 5 items.

I ended packing 10. At which point he reminded me about the list he had sent me. So I reduced what I had packed and ended up forgetting one of them.

In my mind I was imagining he was whisking me to an overnight solo getaway retreat. He is my biggest advocate and is ALWAYS telling me to plan one for some “me-time” to just get away from it all and just relax, plan, dream and refresh. So I thought he had decided to take matters into his own hands and drop me off at an unnamed location for a compulsory retreat.

The Spa day was much MORE fun! Sigh.

But back to my packing story. Here I was packing a full bag, and he was just smiling secretly to himself at how overboard I had gone.

So he had to intervene. And that got me thinking.

Are we simply just carrying too much baggage with us in life? Are there truly really only a few things we need?

A GREAT attitude and mindset. An OPEN mind. A CARING soul. A good WORK ethic. A SUPPORTIVE community.

We travel with too much, don’t know when to let go of things and then we end of letting go of too much.

Need to get back on track with your real estate investments? Carrying too much baggage and feeling like it’s bogging you down? There’s only a very FEW things you really need to get success and we know WHAT they are and HOW you can get them.

I’ll admit, I’ve outgrown a lot of my friends (and if you are reading this, no it’s not you. Or maybe it is).

I listened to a video the other day that talked about when you are hanging out with a group of 5 millionaires, you will be the 6th.

And I want to hang out with a group of millionaires because I have every intention of being one. You know, it’s one of those New Year’s resolutions I made right up next to “Rule the world”. So I am doing everything that I can to get those people into my circles, or get myself into their circles.

And I am willing to make the investment. I may not have shared this before but I have my eye on a mastermind called the Millionaire Alliance that is run by Russ Ruffino’s Clients on Demand that get its members up to 1 million dollars in annual revenue. Mark my words I will be there for their next mastermind retreat in August 2018.

And it’s not cheap. It will cost me multiple five figures, in dollars. And that’s the price I am willing to pay. It was actually my birthday wish this year and my wonderful husband is 100% behind me for it.

And it got me to thinking. I have done a lot of courses these past 2 years since I started my online entrepreneurship journey.

Some of them were free, some of them were paid. A lot of them took time and effort. Very few of them actually got me results. And to be honest, it was not entirely the programs faults’. Sure, they were using outdated strategies that don’t really scale and that I couldn’t really use as a complete nobody coming onto the scene. But the other reason I failed miserably at most of them was, I put in the work pretty half-heartedly.

But the programs that REALLY redeemed themselves had one common denominator, accountability! And that made the difference between whether I put in the work, or just did it “meh”.

And when I found one that ACTUALLY got people results, provided accountability and gave a nobody like me a stepping stone to the big leagues, I was like, where do I sign up!

But it has meant letting go of the things, the activities, the people that are not helping me or getting me closer to my goal.

For the first time in AGES, I am finally exercising consistently, working on purpose, avoiding distractions, (I am writing thing during a 45-minutes uninterrupted DEEP WORK session, did I even know what that meant this time last year?). I am building a team I LOVE, that inspires me every day. I am motivating people around me and knowing that it’s because of ME, and not bashfully redirecting the attention. You need to understand my back story as one where I’ve never felt like I really DESERVE the limelight. And now I am at a place where it doesn’t matter anymore whether I feel like I deserve it or not. And now I do feel it, because I finally GET that it’s not about me. It’s ALL about the ones that I am here on earth to serve and to inspire.

It’s because of the work that I have put into myself that I am finally able and willing to accept that, yes, I CAN, I DO and I WILL motivate those who are seeking them same goal in their lives.

But that has not come cheap. And I am guarding it fearlessly.

The other day I told my husband, ‘I think I may not have been invited to a birthday party by some unnamed friend’. Because everyone I knew seemed to be going to this “thing” that they wouldn’t say was by who.

And before, that would have broken my heart, put me in a slump for days (okay maybe hours, tops, I’m not that touchy feely) and really had me going around like “Woe is me”.

And then, in the moment that I said it, I realised, ‘Hold up. WHY am I unhappy about this?” Because this “friend” may just have done me a favour by being one less person that I needed to drop off on the way to my dreams.

I’m done needing everyone to like me. I’m done needing everyone to approve of what I do. I’m done needing to be the most popular gal in school (coz you know if you weren’t you always fantasized about being that person, be honest).

I’m instead aiming for the feeling of “sweet, delicious, wild” success that is coming my way. And when it hits, that’s when I will know the TRUE friends.

I hope that will inspire you to stop making excuses for your success, your drive, your grit, your determination.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

2 things happened that triggered this: I learnt of the passing of an acquaintance. And a dear friend hit rock bottom.

One is pretty final as far as rock bottom goes. There’s no returning from the great beyond. The other is not.

What I wondered, could either have been prevented? I kept asking myself one question. If this time last year someone had told the person that had passed that in 1 year’s time they would have a stroke and die, would they have lived differently?

Would they have enjoyed life more, yet reined in the elements of that enjoyment that shortened their life?

Would they have jumped out of bed at 6 in the morning to go for that run knowing each mile ran would extend their life by an extra day?

Would they have put down that doughnut because, will, life.

Would they have gone for more check-ups and listened to their doctor more? Would they have lived with the intention to grow old and be able to kiss the cheeks of their grandkids on this earth?

I’d like to think so. Because it sure motivated me to jump out of bed at 6 am this morning to exercise. AND to daydream of kissing my grandkids on their cheeks. And to enjoy life and time with my family more.

We are all on a clock, but we have the grace to be alive RIGHT NOW. And right now is what we need to make the most of.

Because, if we don’t, we either hit a rock bottom with finality, or we hit an interim one, that may feel just like death in it’s bite.

I’m talking about the rock bottom where you lose your will to do it anymore. Where everything you’ve ever worked for comes crumbling down, and you are left with the ashes of your life surrounding you. Left wondering how it came to this, wondering where you went wrong.

The truth is, you can probably pin-point EXACTLY where it went wrong. That time when you chose to turn over on your bed, rather than get up and go hustle.

Or that time when you had a deadline, and you decided to ignore it, because you were at a party last night. (Or because what you were working on was not as perfect as you needed it to be). And so you got passed up for that job, that promotion, or that opportunity.

Or that time when you ignored the most important thing, and focused on the mundane, because it was easy, it was mindless, it was fun for a fleeting moment.

And now, you are reaping what you have sown. It’s time to account for your sins of omission or of commission. With time as your jury and your actions as your judge.

And try as you might, you can’t pass the buck on this one. You KNOW that this didn’t sneak up on you. This was years in the making. Like that time I got a second class honours lower division in my university degree, when I really should have got a first class honours. I knew I had sold myself out, I had fallen short of my capability. I knew that if I had worked harder, I would have waltzed into Yale, or Harvard for my post grad, with a fully paid up scholarship. I knew that I had no one to blame but myself.

Thankfully, it was not rock bottom, and I rebounded from it easy enough. I just broke my back for the next 10+ years to prove that I was worth my mettle, to me as much as to everyone else around me.

See the power of rock-bottom is that once you hit it, there is nowhere else to go but up. That is if you hit the one of the non-permanent variety, also know as six-feet-under.

Since you are reading this, you still have time. Time to prepare yourself to NOT hit rock bottom. Time to work till you drop, to move ahead so fast you leave others around you out of breath.

Time to fill your mind with only thoughts of the hope of where you are going, while being grateful for where you are. And leaving behind the regret of where you could have been.

So what WILL be your rock bottom? What will be your final straw?

As for me, right now, I’m thanking God for life every morning, and praying for peace every night, doing life hard so that I will be spent when my days are done. And before then, making sure the world knows that I am on this earth!

And if you are yearning to never have to hit rock bottom, or you did and you want a way out in regards to your investments.

If you finally want to change the way you have always reacted to the way things have always been done, if you want to do things differently, if this resonates with you in your real estate journey then you owe it yourself to reach out to us and get access to tried and true strategies, expert help and trusted networks at long last. More on how to do that below.

I work with African professionals in the Diaspora to help them maximize their real estate investments, by providing the best strategies for getting financing, managing and monetizing their properties back home. My team and I do this by providing them access trusted networks of the right people and the right strategies so they can finally get moving on owning their first, second or third home or be on their way to getting 6-figure returns from the home they already own. Watch our free masterclass to learn the the 5 Steps Our Clients Use to Earn Six-Figure Rents From Their Homes in Africa (while living abroad and doing it 100% virtually.)

I was talking with my team today and sharing how, for almost 2 months, I carried out almost 100 strategy calls with people that were reaching out to me and connecting with me through my sales funnel. And I did the calls using the WRONG structure!

See, I had signed up for some sales coaching to get my business off the ground. And this coaching was AMAZING! People in the program were consistently hitting 5 figures and more monthly. So I knew it would be a no-brainer to go to the same place. And so I jumped right in. Worked harder than I have ever worked in my life, took calls early in the morning and late in the night just so that I could spend time with my family while on holiday but still get through my volume.

The only problem was, I was NOT using the right sales structure. I THOUGHT I was. I thought I had internalised it, taken it to heart, listened to each training almost 5 times and implemented it.

But my mind had played a trick on me. See a previous program I had done ALSO taught sales call structure and syntax. And it gave me a script. And I have even used this previous script a number of times and signed up some paying clients.

So, like water that flows along a well-worn track, my mind flowed along this familiar sales structure, and effectively sieved everything I was learning in the new system through this old system.

What emerged was NOT pretty, not correct and really, highly ineffective.

But I just kept working harder and harder, blissfully unaware about the faux pas I was making. That was costing me thousands by the way in lost sales… urgh!

The turning point came when it dawned on me just how wrong I was. And no, it didn’t come unbidden, no folks, no “light bulb” moment here while I lay on my bed

It took my coach 10 seconds of hearing me explain what I was doing, to pick out where I was going wrong. And another 10 seconds to let me know HOW I should be doing it instead.

20 Seconds total!!

That’s the power of coaching and mentorship.

Because our minds play tricks on us, also called the art of survival, and conveniently sieves out what it thinks we don’t need to survive. It will revert to old ways and we will never know it. It will avoid change in favor of being comfortable and “getting by.”

And thousands of dollars in losses later, we realize it. And we are often too late.

That is unless, we have a coach.

Even the greatest athletes have coaches. Especially the greatest performers have coaches. CERTAINLY the most wealthy billionaires have coaches.

If you want to be all or ANY of these things, why don’t you have a coach?

What it boils down to is, how badly do you want what you want?

If you want it badly enough, you WILL seek the mentorship that you need for it.

I always wondered how people found mentors to get them where they’d like to get to? I would hear people in online business go like, “When I spoke to my mentor….” Like, I wouldn’t mind having a millionaire mentor to get me where I want to go, so HOW and WHERE can I get one?

Because unlike most people that think they can go it alone, I know that I’m not special. If Serena Williams needs a coach to get her to the top of the world, I sure as heck need one!

The bad news is, it’s probably going to cost you. Time to network and connect with the right one. Money to procure their mentorship.

The good news is, you will make it back as fast as you spent it.

The OTHER good news is, look no further, you’ve found one right here.

The bad news is, you need to get over yourself first and JUST DO IT! It’s costing you your future.

It’s what makes a father, who may be a gangstar, a drunkard, even a murderer, become as meek and mild as a kitten when in the presence of his 5 year old daughter.

It‘s what makes the naughtiest boy in school, suddenly become an obedient and well-mannered little gentleman when he meets that ONE teacher that practises this principle, and unlocks the chivalry in him.

It’s what ensures that public transport passengers in most any country in Europe always buy a ticket when they ride, even if no one is there to check on them (save for the occasional spot check).

It’s what made me, just this evening, switch from thinking “Should I work with this person?” to thinking, “Wow, I HAVE to work with this person, I don’t care what it takes!”.

See, recently I was sourcing an interior designer to work with my clients that are looking to get their properties furnished. And I’d reached out to one that came highly recommended by an architect I respect and who had done work with them in large apartment hotel projects.

So we spoke and the interior designer agreed to send through the budget of what it would cost to furnish a 2-bedroomed apartment. They researched and did the groundwork and developed a spreadsheet of what is on the market.

This spreadsheet really constituted their intellectual capital, the convenience that myself and all my clients as potential clients are paying them to provide. So it’s only natural that they would want to guard it with all their might.

So when they mentioned that they could not share the spreadsheet but would need payment first it made sense to me, i wasn’t about to argue with that.

Then they did something that blew me away.

They told me “Let me in full trust that you will not share out my document, also share with you the spreadsheet, then will you be able to see what it was all about.” And even better they continued, “I will send it in the format that you can edit and eliminate as I might have included things not needed in the apartments. Kindly just do not share my hard work with anyone”.

And suddenly, right then and there, I decided to work with them. And in fact started calculating how soon I could pay them. If you had compared my thoughts just seconds before to my thoughts in the moment they told me this, they were like night and day.

Suddenly, when they put their trust in me, I rose to the occasion. I WAS that person that was worthy of trust. I was not about to let her down because now I saw myself through her eyes. Just like that drunken father will put on his best suit and go for his daughter’s ballet’s recital because he cannot bear the thought of letting her down, of violating her trust.

By that one act, she helped me to transcend the pettiness of doubt, disbelief, ingratitude, greed and selfishness and reach a place where only the purest of intentions live. An that is where I wanted to stay.

But sadly, come morning this fleeting moment may all be gone, when the bright glare of reality, and the sharp odor of the struggle for survival hits my nostrils, and the dream becomes a distant memory.

Why should it? Why must we resort to the very same tactics that bring out the worst in us and those around us? The mistrust, the greed, the I-need-to-get-me-some nature of self-absorbed pursuit?

I have decided that I shall intentionally move away from that. From using any potential commissions I could get from my partners to reduce the cost of what my clients would pay. To paying for things that I had never promised to pay for when my clients signed up, just because it FEELS right, it’s what would serve them best and ultimately, it’s what will make me stand up tall and proud as I speak about the transformation that I facilitate for them through my program.

I AM going to be different. That’s the only thing that I have control over. The minute that my clients have put their trust in me, I AM rising to the occasion.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am just as human as the next person, but I have always prided myself in my integrity. And just like we learn that integrity is what one does when others are not looking, I’ve also learned, what I do in those moments will come back to either haunt me, or bless me.

It will help me when my team and I are speaking to a potential client on the phone and telling them that we offer the BEST of what their exists on the market.

It will help me when we tell them, “You will not find these rates anywhere else”. Because nowhere else do people forego their commission to take their client’s costs down.

Most of all it will help me when I tell my clients, “We only work with the best”. Because only the best, the ones that have their clients goals at heart, will even consider taking a pay cut just so that they can deliver to the maximum.

So I’m going to do my part. And I’m going to change the environment one person at a time.

Maybe it just needs to start with one person choosing to trust on one day. Maybe that person is you. May that day is today.